Joe Pasquale pulls on his second pair of underpants. "Those acrobats are getting younger every year," he complains.

It's panto time and Pasquale is in his dressing room at the Alhambra Theatre. The day's matinee is ten minutes away.

Christmas is over; the kids are back at school, and as we speak, the seasonal run of Peter Pan is drawing to a close.

Pasquale's voice is even squeakier than usual as he contemplates the challenge now before him. "First time I've done anything like this," he says.

He is a comic in the great seaside tradition: a family entertainer for whom the annual pantomime - and the ordeal of keeping pace with those gymnasts in the tumbling sketch - is a way of life.

It's a world away from the legitimate stage for which he is now headed.

Pasquale will follow in Rowan Atkinson and Nicholas Lyndhurst's footsteps in Larry Shue's noted comedy, The Nerd. It comes to the Alhambra next month.

His character is Rick, a bespectacled twit with the social appeal of a mangy cat, who runs amok at a birthday party. Atkinson used it as the inspiration for Mr Bean, and Pasquale is clearly looking to the future, too.

"I think it'll be a good career move," he says. "The question is whether I can do justice to the part."

The play's American owners clearly think he can. They approved his casting after a lengthy "vetting" process in which they examined video tapes of his performances at several Royal Variety shows.

"If they don't like you, you're out," he says. "I'm quite pleased I got through it."

He realises, though, that the discipline of playing "straight" is vastly different to gooning about on a panto stage.

"For a start, I can't ad lib. Your fellow actors don't like it. Panto and TV are more relaxed. I tell the director what I'm going to do and if it's not right they redirect it.

"But here, I've said to the director (the comedian Andrew O'Connor) that I'm completely in his hands. Fortunately, he understands comedy and he understands me. He knows how I work - that's the important thing."

Touring in a play means turning down lucrative club work. "It's not a good financial move," says Pasquale. "But it's something I wanted to do.

"Anyway, I like touring. I did ten years in normal jobs, see, and compared to having to get to Smithfield meat market at five o'clock in the morning, or a margarine factory, touring's like being on holiday.

"However hard this work gets, it's not like going down a mine and knocking your head against a coal face. People moan, 'It's hard work' but it ain't. Gets a bit tiring sometimes, but it's not hard work."

All the same, he had worked solidly through Christmas a few weeks before we spoke. Other people's holidays are a panto star's busiest times.

Pasquale would like to develop his acting skills beyond his current role. He's in talks with ITV about starring in a new sitcom, and about making more episodes of his variety series, The Crazy World of Joe Pasquale.

"But the trouble with TV," he says, echoing the grumbles of many in the industry, "is that no-one commits themselves.

"They keep you waiting and waiting, then they phone and say they want the show done next week. But hopefully, The Nerd will springboard me into a sitcom. Who knows? If nothing else, it'll be good experience."

The play, he says, will be a revelation to his traditional audience. Its script requires his character to insult, sicken and otherwise bore the guests at a party for a friend whose life he once saved.

But Rick is a man of hidden depths, and his presence at the party conceals a deeply unpleasant side to his character.

"To be honest, I don't know how my usual audience will react to it," says Pasquale. "I'm used to 'working them' during a show - getting them going. This is a different thing altogether."

Back to the day job. He pulls on his frilly shirt and prepares to do battle with the acrobats.

Has he learned much about Yorkshire audiences during these twice-nightly panto antics?

"Bradford audiences?" He pauses theatrically, but the comedian's instinct gets the better of him. "They're from up north, aren't they?"

David Behrens

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